Rec Center Tycoon News

Hello everyone, it’s update time once again!

It took me a little longer than expected to get this patch out, mostly because I've been working on a major addition which I decided to exclude from this patch because it was taking too long to develop.
Regardless, this patch has a number of new additions, fixes a huge amount of bugs & addresses many issues left over from the porting process.

This patch should significantly increase stability across various machines as well as fix a number of stutter & performance issues.

In terms of new additions, this update focuses heavily on employees.
So lets get into what's new:


[h3]Employee Lounge[/h3]
Employees with nothing to do now have a place to chill out & recharge.
Like many things in this game, this new zone has been designed to be useful, but not entirely mandatory, especially in the early game.

Different employee types will interact with the Lounge in different ways.
For example, a builder or janitor with nothing else to do might go sit down in the Employee Lounge.
A nurse however, will only go relax if the Rec Center is closed & there are no injured customers. Or unless they’re very overworked.
Likewise, you won't find a well-rested lifeguard taking a break if there are customers in the pools.


[h3]New Employee Stats[/h3]
To complement the Employee Lounge, employees have some new additions:

New Stat: Rest
This stat shows how in-need of a break an employee is.
It functions differently for each employee, so you shouldn’t expect a receptionist to need as many breaks as a builder doing a lot of construction.
‘Rest’ is not as impactful as you might expect, a receptionist or barista can go a full 8 hour shift without needing a break, so don’t worry about your receptionist leaving a full queue of customers waiting while they kick their feet up. However the same might not apply for their next new stat..

New Stat: Bladder
Yep, even employees occasionally need to pee!
Employees will always prefer toilets in zones flagged as ‘staff only’ if any exist. But they will use any toilet if they have to, though they might not like it.
They will also try to time their bathroom breaks to not cause trouble. For example, receptionists will try to wait until their queues are empty before going & nurses will try to wait until there’s no injured customers. But keep in mind that after a while if they can’t find a good opportunity, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

New Trait: Weak Bladder
Watch out for this trait when hiring new staff. These poor employees need pee breaks more frequently than your average employee.
Choose their jobs wisely.


[h3]New Object: Coffee Machine[/h3]
Coffee machines are a new employee-exclusive object to go along with their new zone, although it can be placed in any zone flagged as ‘Employee Only’.
When an employee or manager uses the coffee machine, they gain a small but noticeable 'Caffeine' buff. While under the effects of this, employees gain a boost to their Productivity stat.
Meaning they move, swim & work faster until the effect runs out. However their 'Bladder' stat decays more quickly.
By selecting a coffee machine, the player can alter how strong they want this effect to be.


[h3]Upgraded electrical & lighting system[/h3]
While not particularly noticeable, there have been significant changes to the underlying framework of how lights & electricity works.
These changes reduce the performance impact of having many lights as well as allow for the addition of lights being shown accurately while being placed, rather than just displaying a bright circle.
Also, all lights are now able to have their color, saturation & brightness adjusted.


[h3]Daily Bonuses Overhaul[/h3]
Something that affects players in the late-game is that some of the bonuses gradually became overtuned to the point that they were impossible to complete.
These bonuses have been reworked or replaced with ones that don't gradually change over time.


There are a few more smaller changes which you can read about in the changelog below.

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

[h3]―Notable Changes―[/h3]
• New Zone: Employee Lounge
Employees now have a place to hang out when they have nothing else to do, or when they just need to get off their feet for a bit.
They will use any furniture & various recreational equipment inside the Employee Lounge.
A new buy menu tab has been added to list 'Employee Lounge' objects.

• New Object: Coffee Machine
The coffee machine is exclusive to employee/manager use only. It's the perfect addition to any Employee Lounge or any employee-only zone.
Employees that use it will gain a temporary buff to productivity.

Along with the Employee Lounge, employees have a few new additions:
• New Stat: Rest
Workers with physically demanding jobs may sometimes need a break.
• New Stat: Bladder
Even employees need to pee at some point! They'll use any toilet but will always greatly prefer ones in employee-only zones.
• New Trait: Weak Bladder
Employees with this trait will need to take pee breaks more often.

• Upgraded electrical & lighting system
A significant number of changes & improvements have been made to the way light & electricity works. Some of these changes include:
- All lights are now able to have their hue/saturation/brightness adjusted
- Lights & cables are now purchased from within the utility grid menu
- Lights are now accurately displayed while being placed
- Selecting the 'Power Box' now shows more electrical details
- Reduced performance impact of having many lights

• Daily Bonuses have had significant changes
Previously, some daily bonuses became unachievable in the late-game due to overtuned scaling.
These bonuses have been replaced with more 'scaling-friendly' ones.

• Zone visibility toggle
Zones are now able to be displayed all the time. A new setting has been added to the options menu to toggle their visibility & opacity.

[h3]―Balance Changes―[/h3]
• Customers are now slightly less annoyed by crowds
• Customers are more patient when waiting in reception queues
• Removed some unnecessary traits from class trainers like Night Owl
• Rebalanced costs & time required to unlock various research techs
• Reduced the speed that builders gain 'Construct' & 'Fitness' skills

[h3]―Minor Changes & Bug Fixes―[/h3]
• Improved or re-drew many sprites
• Increased grass texture resolution
• Many small improvements made to Staff menu
• Added new emotes to help customers display their needs
• Builders now fully prioritize demolition over construction
• Improved NPC pathing
• Trainers are now correctly paid when duplicating classes
• Fixed object 'Duplicate' button
• Improved framerate while placing objects
• Fixed FPS Stutter when objects are placed
• Various improvements made to construction tools
• Wall-Mounted lights can no longer be placed on fences
• Fixed issue causing resumes to show incorrect skin tones
• Fixed some issues with setting employee 'Patrol' areas
• Fixed bug that prevents manager from manually cleaning some mess
• Fixed various 'Planner' related bugs
• Fixed issue causing reception/cafe queues to sometimes get stuck
• Fixed possible crash caused by hiring nurses before building an Infirmary
• Fixed bug causing nurses to sometimes ignore customers waiting in chairs
• Fixed a number of graphical issues
• Fixed employee 'Productivity' bar displaying incorrect amounts
• Fixed some issues in the graphs/statistics tab
• Many performance & code optimisations
• Additional minor bug fixes

Hey people, it's time for another major update!

I’m super excited to announce the release of 0.6.0 & the completion of the game engine port!
This is by a wide margin the largest update so far, not necessary in terms of new content, but instead the sheer amount of work done to the ‘framework’ of the game.
With the release of this update, I can finally start to focus on releasing new content & game mechanics without fear of the old game engine losing compatibility with steams API and thus losing the ability to release new patches.

You can read more about the porting process & why it was necessary in the progress update I posted a few weeks ago.

So, aside from being on an updated engine, what else is new? Lets get into that:
I’ll post the full changelog at the bottom.


[h3]Architecture & Performance Improvements[/h3]
Firstly, as part of the port the game is now using 64bit architecture. In addition to this, a lot of work has been done to improve performance because I know games like this tend to be popular on lower end devices like small laptops/notebooks in addition to desktop PCs.
Players should also expect the game to feel smoother & less jittery, even on mid-high end desktop PCs.

Here is a before & after comparison of the same save file loaded on the new update 0.6.0 vs 0.5.3 showing a significant 30% increase in actual, uncapped fps.

While every player can expect a noticeable boost to performance, the amount of performance gained will depend on your PC.


[h3]Achievements[/h3]
This is something people have been requesting since release & I kept putting off because I felt the game was changing so fast that many achievements would become obsolete & need to be deleted or reworked between major patches.
Since this is no longer the case (to the same extent) I’ve decided to start adding them.

I’m starting off with a modest 24 achievements, but keep in mind I plan to add a lot more over time.
This is just the first wave, it’s mostly a mix of ‘firsts’, income milestones with a few difficult ones.

I really like the idea of achievements that present unique & difficult challenges that you wouldn’t normally unlock unless you specifically target them throughout your playthrough, so expect a few like that down the track!


[h3]Construction Planner[/h3]
Another addition I’ve had requested for a long time. This (and the next few changes) is something I briefly mentioned in the update post a few weeks ago.

All construction can now be planned out in advance without committing to anything.
Here’s a screenshot showing how it works:


As you can see a new ‘Planner’ button has been added to the bar at the bottom of the screen.
When clicked, you enable ‘Planner Mode’. From then on you can continue to build as you normally would, except all walls, floors & doors you place are considered ‘plans’, and won’t be built unless you click ‘Execute Plans’ in the planner window at the top left of the screen.

If you hold ‘Shift’ while the planner is up, you can click & drag to remove any plans you have placed.


[h3]Buy/Build Menus[/h3]
Both the Buy & Build menus have been completely remade from scratch.


These menus also have no noticeable impact on performance, whereas the old ones could have a significant performance impact on older machines.

As part of this port I cleaned up a lot of messy code & added all the information about objects & construction to databases which meant I could easily sort/filter them all any way I like, so I added this nifty little mouseover tooltip that shows a bit more detail about what you’re buying.


[h3]Ceilings Overhaul[/h3]
The old ceiling system was a relic from 2018, about a year before the game was even first released. And were just awkward rectangles that told the game where to draw shadows. They could overlap each other & even exist entirely within larger rectangles, and because they were placed whenever the ‘Room’ tool was used, this was fairly common.
For example, if you built a ‘room’ entirely inside another room, a completely unneccessary, invisible ‘ceiling’ was added on it, quietly requesting shadows be drawn there even though there already are.
By late-game some users that relied heavily on the ‘Room’ tool could experience significant performance loss because of it.
So, like I’ve done with many other parts of the games framework this year, I recoded how it works from scratch.
Now, it works on a simple grid system & has only a fraction of the performance impact the old system had, regardless of how much ceiling space you have.

Here's an example of how it looks now when you are adding/removing ceillings:

As you can see, ceilings are no longer colored squares & now have a nice visual display to show whether or not a ceiling tile is built, or in progress.


[h3]Visual Improvements[/h3]
There are too many visual improvements overall to list here but I'll go through some of the biggest ones.
- The skin & hair color of all NPCs is no longer just a few pre-set options but now varies on a wide spectrum of color, saturation & brightness
- To reflect this, there are some new new customisation options to choose from when starting a new game:

- A couple new hair styles & a bun to choose from, some new facial hair options & a variety of new clothing colors & options
- Trees now have accurate shadows instead of blobs
- Customers actually lay on pool chairs rather than just stand on them


[h3]Camera Rework[/h3]
The game camera (what the player sees) has been significantly improved & now allows for zooming in & out much further, zooms smoothly rather than in chunks & will move towards the mouse while zooming in.


There are numerous other small changes like the ones above which you can find in the changelog.
I've decided to skip listing bug fixes & many minor changes this time because there's just too many to list & many of the major changes this patch have rendered old bugs obsolete anyway.


[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

Rec Center Tycoon is now running on an updated engine!

What does this mean for players?
• First thing, all old saves are fully compatible with the updated engine & should remain so with future updates
• Players should expect a significant boost to framerate & much smoother game performance
• A larger focus on developing new game content from now on instead of mostly behind-the-scenes framework upgrades
• The game is running on 64-bit architecture

―Notable Changes―
• The first 24 achievements have been added
• A construction planner has been added allowing players to design their building layouts before committing to them
• The hair color of all NPCs is no longer limited to just a few set colors & now varies based on a wide spectrum of color & luminosity
• Skin color has also been expanded to support many different tones
• Ceilings have been overhauled & are now based on grids rather than awkward squares. The end result is easier to manage & should result in a performance increase for large Rec Centers
• The camera-view (what the player sees) has been recoded from scratch & now supports zooming in & out much further in addition to zooming & scrolling being smoother
• Significantly reduced performance cost of having many NPCs on screen
• Buy & Build menus have been remade from scratch
• Wall-Mounted lights are now placed directly on walls, also their brightness & size has been increased
• Pool Chairs have been reworked & customers now properly lay on them
• Tree shadows are now more detailed
• An new tooltip shows more info about what you are buying like:
if it rotates, has alternate skins, uses electricity or stock & more

―Balance Changes―
• Trainers now drop 30% less mess than in previous patches
• Various additional objects now require maintainence
• Some new objects require electricity to use like the First Aid Terminal
• Many electricity costs have been slightly rebalanced to account for this
• Vending Machines stock capacity has been increased from 10 to 20
• Income from memberships has been decreased by roughly 10%
• Slightly reduced base stats of job applicants without Poaching tech
• Significantly reduced the cost of computer parts & some software

―Minor Changes―
• Various new clothing colors & designs have been added
• Events & classes are now displayed separately in the finance page
• The top bar now has a 'Manager' icon that targets them directly
• Membership prices are based on 7 day weeks instead of every 4 days
• Cooks' AI has been improved & they should no longer get stuck in place
• Picking up injured customers is now prioritized over repairing
• Money popups now show the correct amount when upgrading computers
• Tax Advisor & Employee Wages techs now apply instantly
• Improvements made to Reception/Cafe queues
• Added & color corrected many menu & button icons
• Added many more object & building tooltips
• Many object & equipment sprites have been improved
• Construction sounds now vary in pitch
• A new, more detailed error logging system is in place
• Far too many additional bug fixes & improvements to list



[h3]Final Note[/h3]
This is an extremely large update in terms of code & framework changes to the game, this means that there are likely to be some new bugs & crashes still lurking undiscovered, despite the 2 week beta this patch had (Which turned out to be very useful, thank you to all those who participated & reported bugs!).

I know it's been a while since the last patch, & this will hopefully stay the longest period between major patches. Especially now that I can focus more on developing actual game content rather than framework upgrades/porting.

Thanks for sticking around & I hope you enjoy!

Hey everyone, it's been a good while!
I want to update you all on the progress of the upcoming engine port & answer some questions.

Although I've been mostly silent recently on these forums, I've been very hard at work in order to get this latest patch ready. It's by far the largest patch to date in terms of development hours. And due to being ported to the updated game engine, this patch makes changes, however big or small, to almost every part of the game.
So many changes in fact, that I felt the need to do this short beta test so any owners can jump in & test it before the patch is fully released.

So if you're interested in trying the new patch a little early (it's live right now), you can read about how to do that at the bottom of this post.

But for now, I'll do my best to answer some questions about how development has been progressing.

[h3]What's been taking so long?[/h3]
So, if you've read any previous patch updates you may remember that I've been working on porting the entire game to the updated 'version 2' of the engine the game uses. This ended up taking a long time because the game relied heavily on features that were removed from the updated engine meaning I had to basically recode them from scratch.
Along with needing to rebuild large parts of the game, another big reason for the delay is that I became a dad a few months ago which definitely took a toll on my work flow. However the hardest part is over, things have settled & I've been making a huge amount of progress in recent weeks.

[h3]Why port is this engine port happening?[/h3]
This port is something that I couldn't put off as support for the previous game engine version ended in late 2018, meaning if Steam were to change their SDK or API in a way that broke compatibility with the engine, I could have completely lost the ability to release any new updates, which for an early-access game, is a pretty huge deal.
So rather than tempt fate by sticking with the old engine, I chose to port it over, get it done & out of the way so I can focus on adding new gameplay features again.

[h3]Hows the port progressing?[/h3]
The good news is that it's finished!
That being said, due to the port AND the huge amount of other changes in this new 0.6.0 update, I'm going to hold off releasing it just in case there are any yet discovered game-breaking bugs.
Instead, I've uploaded the latest development build to the steam beta channel so anyone who owns the game can try it out.
All saves new & old should be fully compatible with the 0.6.0 beta so you shouldn't have any concerns about losing your save (Although it can never hurt to back up your save folder just in case). Also any saves made while playing the 0.6.0 beta will carry over & be fully functional when the patch fully releases.

[h3]What else is new in 0.6.0?[/h3]
A lot actually!
Since I had to rewrite many core functions of the game, I made significant improvements to many of them. I won't go into too much detail here as I'll save that for when I post the actual 0.6.0 update soon, (You can see the full changelog if you jump in now & try it on the beta anyway) but I'll share a couple of new features & improvements coming.

- The way ceilings work has been rebuilt from scratch & now uses a grid system instead of those awkward squares.


- When looking through the buy/build menus, you now get a handy tooltip that shows more info about what you're buying.


- I've added a much requested construction planner that allows players to plan out their building designs before committing to actually building anything.


This certainly isn't all that's coming in 0.6.0, but I'll save those details for the actual update post.

If all goes to plan I'll hopefully release the update properly in a week or so (assuming no major game breaking issues are discovered).
There are a huge number of changes & improvements that have been made to the game that you can read about in the in-game changelog, otherwise I'll post the full patch notes when I release the update fully.

[h3]How to opt into the beta[/h3]
The 0.6.0 beta patch is live right now for anyone who wants to try it.

To opt into the Rec Center Tycoon beta all you need to do is right click the game in your Steam Library, click Properties > Betas, then select Development Builds from the menu.
It should download immediately.

As shown here:


Existing save data should be fully compatible with this update, although it's never a bad idea to make a backup just in case.

I'm definitely expecting a few new bugs since this patch changes so much, and if you encounter any, feel free to make a post on this forum or (preferably) send an email to [email protected].

And hopefully if all goes well, I'll give the update its full release in a week or so.

Thank you for your patience & understanding!

[h3]Hey everyone, time for another update![/h3]

So I've been hard at work on the next major content patch & upcoming engine port, which means there's not a great deal of new content in this patch.

But even though this is a minor patch in terms of new content, it's a major patch in terms of framework changes & upgrades.
These changes will make future development & much faster, easier & far less prone to bugs.

Boring technical stuff here, skip down to the changelog to see the important stuff.
To give an example of what I'm talking about, in the past if I wanted to add a single new floor or wall to the game, I'd need to go through a bunch of scripts scattered all around the project & add code for it manually, go through menu code & make space for it, go through the research tree code & add it where it needs to go & then testing it all etc.. this would take a long time.

But now as of this patch, adding a new type of floor or wall is as easy as adding an entry to a simple spreadsheet that looks something like this:

Everything else is now automatically handled with code. Changes like the above example are the kind of thing I've been working on over the last few months. Tonnes of upfront coding to streamline later content additions. Many other in-game systems have been re-coded from the ground up to work just as easily, and there are many more still to go.

One side effect of all this optimisation & code cleanup, is that if I ever add mod support and/or community content, these changes will make it far simpler to implement.

But even though this is mostly 'behind the scenes' work preparing the the upcoming engine port, there's still a few notable additions:


[h3]Here's the full changelog:[/h3]

A new tech has been added to the research tree: 'Advanced Flooring'.
This tech adds 3 new types of floor, each providing a mild beneficial effect:
- Heavy Duty Gym Mat: Slows durability decay by 5% for equipment on this.
- Marble Floor: Provides a slight boost to the environment stat of those walking over it.
- White Vinyl Tiles: Mess dropped on this is cleaned 10% faster. Great for areas often exposed to mess.

There are also 4 new floors added to existing techs:
- 'Concrete Pool Slabs', a new tile that works well surrounding pools
- 3 new carpet colors added to the 'Colored Carpet' tech

- A new type of random spawning tree has been added, also randomly spawned trees now grow slowly over time & new trees can occasionally appear.

- The way zones & electrical cables are drawn has been converted from tile based to grid based in preparation for upcoming engine port, the end result should look the same but result in a performance increase when zones or cables are displayed.

- Arcade Machines have had more sprites added so they can now be rotated!

[h3]Balance Changes:[/h3]
- Some techs in the Research tree have had their prices re-balanced
- Star rating now has a bigger impact on casual customer spawn rates
- Trainer skills now increase roughly 50% slower
- Critically Injured customers now take around 20% longer to die
- Many pre-existing floor tiles have had their prices adjusts
- Customers will no longer complain about crowds while on computers or at the cafe
- Customers are now a little more lenient with crowds in general
- Equipment repair time has been changed from a 2 second flat rate to a variable time based on equipment price, durability & the skill of the repairer
- The managers' 'Strength' stat now reduces all assemble/build/move/repair times by a flat 1.5% per point up to a max of 75%. Meaning something that takes 10 seconds to build, will take 2.5 seconds to build with 50 points in 'Strength'

[h3]Minor Changes & Bug Fixes:[/h3]
- The 'Build Wall' & 'Room' functions have been visually improved
- Lifeguard chairs now display a range indicator when selected
- More notifications & emotes have been added for user-friendliness
- Customers now say the zone they're in when complaining of crowds
- 'Rust Protection' tech no longer incorrectly halves repair costs
- Classes now get cancelled if there is nowhere for the trainer to stand
- Fixed bug allowing trainer skills to go above their intended cap
- Fixed bug allowing classes to have more signups than the zone capacity
- Fixed bug causing janitors to stop moving when they can't reach mess
- Fixed a restocking bug causing a janitor/manager to get stuck wandering
- Fixed crash caused by manually carrying an injured customer to the road
- Removed additional ways for mess to be dropped out of bounds
- Fixed issue causing dramatic framerate drop when targetting some zones
- Many minor GUI improvements & performance increases
- Many significant changes to underlying game framework
- Cleaned up & organised lots of code for upcoming port
- Framework changes made to increase device compatibility
- Additional minor changes & bug fixes


[h3]What's next?[/h3]
Between engine port preparation, working on the next major update, working on monthly updates & now taking care of my newborn son, this trend of 'content light' & 'framework heavy' updates might unfortunately continue for a little while longer.

I'm not really ready to go into too much detail yet but the next major content patch will have some very 'large' additions. Stuff I've had on my to-do list since day 1.

Stay tuned for more info & thank you for your patience & support! :)

Ps. Don't forget to send me any cool Steam achievement ideas at [email protected]!

Hey everyone, time for another update.

Nothing major this time, just a small, mid-cycle patch that fixes some critical bugs & adds some useful quality of life features.

Notably, a progression mistake has been fixed that allowed players to unlock the Infirmary along with the Medical Cabinet before the Storage Shelf was unlocked, leaving the player unable to have their janitors stock the Medical Cabinet. To fix this, the Storage Shelf now unlocks with Essentials, so players will have access to it at the start of the game.

Here's a full list of the patch notes:

- Bins now have a 'Empty Upon Closing' checkbox that means if checked, all bins will be flagged for emptying when the Rec Center closes.

- Storage shelves similarly now have a 'Restock All When Closed' checkbox that when checked, causes everything that uses stock to be flagged for a full restock while the Rec Center is closed. Allowing you to always start the day with things like vending machines being fully restocked.

- Reworked many GUI elements
- Improved framerate due to GUI optimisations
- Added celsius/fahrenheit toggle to options menu
- Removed unnecessary ambiance toggle from options menu
- Stock Shelf renamed & no longer requires Merchant I to purchase
- Added scroll bar to review & employee windows
- Added membership display to top GUI bar
- Fixed bug causing janitors to freeze in place
- Fixed bug causing forever restocking employees
- Many small performance optimisations
- Additional framework changes for upcoming port
- Plus additional minor bug fixes & changes

I'll have more info about upcoming major changes at a later date!